


(make you, break you) in another life (hold you, take you)

by rednow



Series: mishandled discs and memory books (dream smp) [7]
Category: Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Brotherly Affection, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Death, Claustrophobia, Claustrophobic TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Emotional Hurt, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Murder, Pandora's Vault Prison, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Psychological Torture, Scared TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, TommyInnit Needs a Break (Video Blogging RPF), TommyInnit Needs a Hug (Video Blogging RPF), Violence, Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, author apologizes profusely but also flips you off, i am so incredibly sorry guys but this will hurt. it will hurt because it hurt me writing all of it, ok my 2 sbi tags are in pog, ok we're done, so brace urself it will NOT be pretty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 09:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30019578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rednow/pseuds/rednow
Summary: "You’re my biggest fan, Tommy. Don't you remember saying so?”Tommy looks up at him, eyes threatening to tear furiously.“Don’t you remember, Tommy?” Wilbur continues, smiling down cruelly. “Don’t you remember being my whole world? Don’t you remember me being your world? We can have that back, Tommy. We can have it all back. Just you and me. We can be the bad guys again, Tommy, we can take back everything that was taken away from us.”Or, In another life, Dream's hands itch in glee. Wilbur revives in the Dream SMP prison. He's unhinged and scary. Dream thinks its funny.Tommy generally has a miserable time.
Relationships: Clay | Dream & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream & Wilbur Soot, Clay | Dream & Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Series: mishandled discs and memory books (dream smp) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2140326
Comments: 49
Kudos: 467





	(make you, break you) in another life (hold you, take you)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [itisjosh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/itisjosh/gifts).



> hey josh, thank you. <3 this is a gift to say thank you for everything. also this was supposed to be the one for your 200th LMAO. me gifting mcd as appreciation is truly the peak of kindness
> 
> cw: heavy and graphic violence, more than one character death, murder, emotional manipulation, claustrophobia, oh dear god what did I write. on a serious note, please stay safe. read the tags first. 
> 
> happy reading, everyone! or as happy as it gets.

Tommy doesn’t trust his instincts a lot anymore, but after all that he has been through, if there’s one thing he’s sure of, it is this. 

Dream is a motherfucking _bitch._

“I missed you, you know.“ 

Tommy scrambles back into the corner of the cell on all fours, his back hitting the lectern stand. 

“Oh, _Tommy,_ I’ve missed you so much. I've missed you."

The tone is not genuine. It’s sing-song, playful, like it’s supposedly a family reunion and it makes his flesh crawl.

Tommy struggles to find his voice. “I know,” he says, feeling his throat close in hopelessly. “But I didn’t.”

“Oh.” There’s a suffocating pause. “Is that so? But why, Tommy? You’re my best friend, aren’t you?” Tommy’s toes curl up out of his own accord. “You’re my right-hand man, you’re my confidante… Tommy. Just tell me you’ve missed me too. I know you have. I need to hear it. Tell me you’ve missed me.”

“I haven’t.” His voice seems to have stopped working. He wraps his right arm around himself, digging fingernails into his skin so hard that they break in. The pain doesn’t hurt. It keeps him grounded to the hellish reality. “I haven’t, Wilbur. I don’t fucking _miss_ you.”

Wilbur sighs from a few steps away, shaking his head. “That’s stupid. That’s stupid, Tommy, you’ve known me for so long. No one knows me better than you.”

He takes a step forward. 

“I used to,” Tommy echoes hollowly, pushing back further into the lectern. The lectern prods the back of his head uncomfortably. There’s no space to go back any further without knocking it off. “I used to. And then you fucked it all up. I don’t know you anymore, Wilbur, and it’s entitled of you to think I do.”

“But, Tommy…” Wilbur croons, coming closer. “I love you. I _love_ you.” He hunkers down to his knees next to the lectern to level with Tommy on the floor. “You’re like my little brother!” 

He makes a sudden reach to ruffle Tommy’s hair but Tommy panics, frantically scrambling back and knocking off the lectern in the process. 

The books fall off, one after another, in what feels like sickening slow motion. The metal lectern clangs onto the obsidian floor again and again till it finally stills in the middle of the room. The loud noise is piercing to the silence of the cell and to Tommy’s ears, which are used to violence. 

Wilbur, momentarily distracted by the commotion, now turns back to him. He tilts his head to his side, watching Tommy. Tommy fidgets and presses deep into the wall, the crying obsidian cool to his clothed touch. 

“Tommy…” Wilbur trails off, voice half sighing, half sickly sweet. "Tommy, let me–"

“Do not _touch_ me, Wilbur, I will cut off your hands.” Tommy crows savagely, but it comes out hoarse in terror. 

Wilbur sighs, as if he’s done playing, and pulls back from him to stand up, nose scrunching in annoyed disgust. 

From the diagonal corner, where a sizzling and bubbling curtain of lava captures them in, there’s a shift in the shadows. 

“Now, now, let’s not get too hasty, shall we?” 

Dream uncrosses his arms and strides forward to the middle of the room. 

His glee is gloatingly free on his face. “You guys just met, c’mon now,” he grins, bouncing lightly on his heels. “Be _nice_ to each other. You are brothers, after all! This is a family reunion!” He places a hand on his waist, locking eyes with Tommy. “C’mon, Tommy, haven’t you missed Wilbur? Your older brother? Be nicer to him!”

Dream. The man who ruined his life over and over. Everything about Dream angers Tommy. 

Wilbur grins suddenly, whipping around to face their archenemy. “Well, glad you’re on my side, Dream!” He motions back to Tommy. “That’s what I’ve been telling him. I’ve missed _him._ He should miss me too. It’s only correct.”

The crying obsidian chooses that moment to drip, its sickly purple leaching into the back of Tommy’s t-shirt. Tommy feels himself go unhinged.

“Hey Dream, Dream, kill me.” Tommy stands back up, fists balling. “Kill me, Dream, you said you would. Kill me, do it, try and kill me now.” 

Wilbur looks at him, vaguely amused, arms slack to his side. “Tommy… That’s not the way, Tommy,” he begins, but Tommy spits onto the ground between them. 

"Fuck you, and your ways, Wilbur!"

“Tommy!” Wilbur shouts at him, face blotched in anger.

“Yeah, fuck you for ruining it all! Fuck you for being a selfish fucking prick, fuck you for taking away what we had, fuck you for making me forgive you every fucking time, fuck you fuck you fuck–” 

Tommy doesn’t get to finish himself because Wilbur lunges forward. Tommy’s eyes widen and he tries to dodge the blow, but it ends poorly. Wilbur shoves him back hard, and Tommy crashes, his back slamming into the rock-hard obsidian wall, and he sinks to the floor. 

From his corner, Tommy makes a ragged exhale.

From the other corner, Dream merely laughs.

Tommy feels a sharp pain hammering down his shoulder blade. He’s sure he just broke it.

“Wilbur Soot,” Dream says dignifiedly, but Tommy notices how Wilbur’s jaw stiffens. “So. You’re a changed man now, huh?” 

Wilbur’s eyes glint distrustfully. “Don’t know how much I’ve changed, if I have to say so, Dream.” 

Dream shuffles on his feet. “Well, look at Tommy.” He coughs awkwardly, like Wilbur just missed the joke of the century. 

Wilbur raises a brow. “Tommy? He was being a bit of a brat.”

“Fuck you, Wilbur!”

Wilbur immediately snaps back to him, his upper lip curling. He comes closer and Tommy suddenly realizes that the cell is too small. The prison cell is too suffocating, too measly, too wrongly built to contain three people, two of whom are dangerous individuals equally fucked in the brain, and Tommy’s eyes water in the stifling heat.

“Look here, TommyInnit,” Wilbur begins, and his voice is unnecessarily forced. 

“Look at me. You’re my brother. No matter what you say. You’re my brother, you miss me, and now that I’m back, you’re going to be with me. Don’t make me have to change my plans.” 

Tommy feels a wave of rabid hurt overwhelm me. “You pushed me, you dickhead! What the _fuck_ is wrong with you, you sick, twisted— fuck, no, get away from me!” Tommy scrambles back to the corner where the books lay scattered and Wilbur pulls back his hand again, rolling his eyes.

“Tommy, you’re making things hard for yourself.”

Tommy lands his fists on the obsidian floor, bracing himself. “I don’t want anything to do with you, Wilbur, I don’t love you.”

There’s a beat. And then, Wilbur laughs. 

He laughs and then stops and looks at Tommy and starts laughing again. His once warm laugh is now harsher, filled with something sinister, and it floods the room, cruel and twisted at its very core.

 _“I don’t love you,”_ Wilbur mocks him scathingly, and Tommy flinches. “No, Tommy,” he says, leaning lightly against the obsidian wall, and his tall figure blocks Tommy into his corner. The crying obsidian immediately bleeds purple into the uniform Wilbur sports proudly. L’manberg is long gone now, Tommy feels, and Wilbur is an apt representation of that. “You adore me,” Wilbur tells him. “You cherish me, you worship me, you do more than just _love_ me. You’re my biggest fan, Tommy. Don't you remember saying so?”

Tommy looks up at him, eyes threatening to tear furiously. 

“Don’t you remember, Tommy?” Wilbur continues, smiling down cruelly. “Don’t you remember being my whole world? Don’t you remember me being your world? We can have that back, Tommy. We can have it all back. Just you and me. We can be the bad guys again, Tommy, we can take back everything that was taken away from us.”

Tommy then does a very stupid thing. 

He does the stupidest thing he's ever tried to do. 

He’s not sure why he does it because it’s a stupid fucking thing to do with Dream being in the same prison cell as them, watching all of this unfold, and Wilbur’s stronger than him so it could all go so wrong, but he does it anyway. 

He heaves up from the ground and shoves Wilbur into the lava curtain with all his might.

~

_INTERMISSION_

“Tommy, Tommy, listen to me– Tommy shhh.” 

In his blacked-out blur, he hears Wilbur’s voice. It’s kind. Tommy makes a whimpering noise. His shoulder blade hurts, and the side of his face feels like it was struck hard with a rock heated to a thousand degrees Celsius.

“Shhh, Tommy, it’s just the void. Listen, can I touch you?”

It’s suffocating. If the cell was suffocating, the void is more. Tommy doesn’t want to be here. 

“Tommy?” he hears Wilbur’s voice call out. “I’m here, Tommy, are you okay? What happened?”

Tommy doesn’t remember how he got back here again. Fuck, all he knows is his body aches, the void is making him fucking claustrophobic, and he would give anything to get out of here.

Nothing could be worse than this place. Right? Nothing could be worse than this place. He just wants to go back to the overworld.

Wilbur keeps trying. “Tommy, talk to me. Can I hold you?”

“It’s small.” Tommy mumbles.

He hears Wilbur pause, gears clicking into place.

“It’s not. It’s not, Tommy,” Wilbur tells him. “The void is actually very large. It’s just the darkness, Toms. Don’t you hear my voice reverb out? It’s actually very large. The void goes very far. You’re safe, Tommy. Nothing can hurt you here. Can I hold you?”

“I can’t see. I can’t see… what if the void– like the cell– what if the void just… ends.”

“The void doesn’t end, Tommy. It’s not the cell. The void goes on and on and on and you’ll never be trapped here. I’m going to hold your hand, okay? I’m going to hold your hand, and if you want, we can walk around in the void, and you’ll see it doesn’t end. The void doesn’t end, _ever,_ it just goes on forever.”

Tommy’s toes curl in and he curls them out. “Okay.”

“Okay. That’s good, Tommy. Okays are good. And nothing will hurt you here, I promise. I’m here, nothing will hurt you. The void is not like the cell Tommy, you are safe.”

“Okay.” 

Wilbur slips his hand into Tommy’s. He secures his grip around Tommy's palm and pulls him up from the ground. “And Tommy?”

Tommy looks into the darkness where the voice stems from. Presumably, that’s where Wilbur is.

“I love you,” Wilbur tells him. “It’s good to have you back. I love you.”

Tommy's chest tightens. “Okay.”

“That’s very good,” Wilbur pauses. And then: “You are my brother, Tommy.” 

In the stifling silence of the void, where Wilbur can’t see him in the ink-black darkness, tears roll down Tommy’s cheeks.

Tommy doesn’t understand why he’s crying, he doesn’t understand why he’s so fucking miserable when Wilbur’s just being kind to him, but at the very least, he’s glad as fuck that Wilbur can’t see him.

Wilbur’s grip on his palm is warm. His hand engulfs his own, securing him, and when Wilbur doesn’t pull away even after a few moments, Tommy finds that his wavering knees stop shaking. 

“Okay,” he tells Wilbur.

That is all Tommy says.

And Wilbur pulls Tommy into him.

~

Tommy doesn’t see what comes next.

Wilbur shrieks, eyes open in horror, arms failing to stabilize himself.

Dream yells from the corner, starting to make forward to stop the fall.

Tommy just stands there in shock, arms to his side, his brain buzzing full static.

In what feels like an hour, but is actually only half a second or two, Wilbur falls into the lava. There’s a sizzling burning sound that overtakes Wilbur’s screams and then his body vanishes out of this world, into the void.

Wilbur is gone. 

A confirmatory message flashes out into the lands of Dream SMP. It would cause a ruckus among its citizens in the morning. 

_[Wilbur Soot tried to swim in lava]_

Dream turns to him. Tommy doesn’t look at him. He can feel the anger that radiates off of him even from his distance.

“Tommy. What. the. FUCK was that? You will pay for this.”

Dream backs each word with a blistering level of vigor, and even in his state of coma, it is enough to jar Tommy into focusing on the taller man.

Dream advances and Tommy falters a footstep back. In the ominous light from the lava, Dream's porcelain mask bleeds a deep shade of scarlet. “You’re going to pay for this, Tommy," the masked man says. "You think it’s going to be that easy getting rid of Wilbur?”

Dream shoves Tommy hard backward, and Tommy stumbles a few steps back. His chest burns in pain.

“You think it’s that easy to run away from your problems?” Dream asks him ferociously. “You’re going to suffer, Tommy. You’re going to _suffer,_ and each time you come back, you will suffer more. You’ll never die, Tommy, I’m going to keep bringing you back and you’re going to pay for each one of your sins.” 

He shoves him back again, and this time Tommy’s back mutely crashes onto the obsidian wall. “You’ll never win this, not as long as _I’m_ here. And guess what, Tommy?”

Dream reaches out to grab his chin to tilt it upwards. Tommy struggles but Dream’s grip is punishingly hard and he’s forced to look at a mask that hides all and reveals none.

“Enjoy your visit, Tommy. Because I’m going to be here, forever.”

Dream lands a searing punch onto his cheek and Tommy feels life ungracefully slip away from him.

_[You Died!]_

His death screen flashes in front of him as life fades out, being alive once again falling on the back burner.

Tommy doesn’t hope for a lot anymore, but after all that he has been through, if there’s one thing he really wants, it is this.

Maybe Wilbur’s kinder in the afterlife.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!
> 
> fun fact: the title is based off the lyrics from a song i've never heard, and never will (just to keep it that way, lmao). i just thought it fit the concept behind this fic extremely well, and i went with it. song's "you in another life" by dogjoy btw.
> 
> anyway, please leave kudos and comments if you enjoyed, i need validation and i crave them all the damn time. long comments are pog, i appreciate them a lot and re-read obsessively and sob
> 
> as an oneshots person, user sub to me i beg. i must become rich. my kids are all crying, i need to buy them pacifiers you see


End file.
